


You Can't Always Go Home

by AsarStar



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Long Lost Family, post-Sunnydale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-26 20:18:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1701209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsarStar/pseuds/AsarStar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He goes back for them, but getting them back is a longer path.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Can't Always Go Home

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own BtVS or The Blacklist, they belong to their respective creators and license holders. I'm just having some fun.
> 
> A/N: not quite sure why I wrote this, but I'm feeling decently good about it.Also, please note, I'm generally a dialogue and description addict, so this is me attempting something not generally my style. This was a piece I posted over at TTH. My fandom is BTVS x-overs with my other favorite things. I thought this might be a good first piece to bring over here.

When he's finally able to protect them, he goes back for his wife and daughter, only to find the house was sold and they're no longer there. Rumor was the house was filled with blood, rumor was one of her relatives sold it, and rumors are all he has now. 

It's ten years before he sees anything that amounts to evidence of what happened. There she is on the news, not being interviewed, but being followed, being trumped as the one who saved the population of an entire town from dying. She denies it. The stories keep coming, how she saved them every day from the moment she moved to town. There she is on the television, on the covers of newspapers and magazines, the blond who looks so much like his late wife, the blond he's quite certain is his once presumed dead daughter. That's not the kicker though, the kicker is her sister, too young to be his, but there, beside her, the perfect image of his own mother as a young woman.

They're difficult to get close to, protected from all sides. Just as quickly, she's the recognized head of what's easily one of the oldest organizations in the world, older than the catholic church even, but she doesn't walk in with just power the way former heads have, she walks in with an army. Now she's not just difficult to get to, she's impossible to get to.

It takes 5 years to get a hold of DNA proof that she's his daughter. It takes two more years to get the baffling and entirely surprising news that her four years younger sister is genetically an identical twin, regardless of how different they appear. By then he's realized as is, they'll want nothing to do with him, he has to make a change.

It’s a chance of luck that a conversation with his old pal Sam presents an opportunity. Sam's girl, one he knows all about, is just about to graduate from FBI training. He can manipulate her, he knows enough about her, and it's not a bad move. He knows Sam's ill, and Sam wants him to keep an eye on his little girl. This is a favor he can fulfill. Keeping an eye on her keeps her safer than if he finds someone else.

When the day comes that she asks if he's her father, he says no, and she believes him, because that's the truth. He doesn't tell her about his own Elizabeth, the one he hasn't seen in over twenty years. He doesn't tell her about the other young woman, the daughter he's never met. He certainly doesn't tell her that they're the driving force behind all of this.

It's two years in that she finally approaches him with a case he's been expecting. They finally trust him enough to ask about big stuff. Buffy Anne Summers, is she a threat? Honestly, he knows the answer is yes, but not for the reasons they think. She's a threat for her morality, high and strict as it is. She's a threat because she won't let any of her girls enter in the military and fight for this country or any other country, depriving them of a resource he knows they think they deserve.

He tells them the truth. She functions at a higher level than even they do. Human life is sacrosanct for the Council more so than ever before. She has taken a power hungry group and turned it into a holy army, minus the religion. They have higher, loftier goals than fighting for land, money, or power. They fight for the survival of the human race against an enemy very few recognize, and they have no use for men like him.

 _I wouldn't touch her if I could._ His exact words, and he stands by them for the next year, where they subtly try to get him to move on her, well as subtly as the FBI is capable of, which isn't very at all. He knows someone higher up is pushing, so he sends a warning flair out, through his connections to the edges of her connections. The first and only time he's ever attempted to reach out to her.

She walks into the Post Office like she owns it, no FBI escort, just a couple of girls in their early twenties. When they're surrounded by men in guns, she laughs, demands to see Cooper in the operations room and proceeds to bend one of the assault rifles in half as though it's made of aluminum foil.

She comes not only to read them the riot act, but with a list of names of people at that very moment being arrested for treason. Those names are the same names at the top of his list, names he can't yet quite reach on his own, because even with the FBI helping him, he's still very much on his own. What she wants to know though is who on the list, and anyone off the list, is pushing their desire to investigate her and the Council. Helpfully, she informs them that any activities on their part, may actively be treading on a two hundred year old treaty which protects her and her organization from anything short of murder charges, and since they're very open about allowing their people to be tried in the local courts (so long as they're honest) that shouldn’t be the issue. Given that they're not investigating murder, because they haven't found any, Cooper grudgingly looks at the list then points to a name, one of his higher-ups that's no longer a higher-up, and she congratulates him on his promotion.

She doesn't talk to him, doesn't look at him, doesn't interact with him for a moment, not until they're leaving, when she manages to walk past him. She slides a business card into his hand and tells him she won't ignore his call. He asks how long she's known, and she tells him she's known since the fall of Sunnydale. Then, needlessly, she tells him she knows everything, because as they both know her resources are limitless.

They want him to call, they want him to reach out to them. The card has her private number written on the back. For the first moment in a very long time, he feels truly successful.

Elizabeth asks him about it, later, when everyone's gone, and he's mentally scratching down the names of the arrested from his blacklist. He wants to be smug, he wants to look as proud of himself as he feels, but he's certain there's nothing suave or powerful about his outer presence, there's only relief.

_My daughter._

He can see she's disappointed, because deep down, he knows she always held out a slight hope he was really her father. Her real father is one of the last few names on the Blacklist. Despite Sam, really because of him, he's come to see her as a daughter, one he'd be proud to have. Her smile in response to the next thing he says, and the meaning behind it, are enough to maybe have made it all worth it if his own daughters hadn't forgiven him.

_Think you could use a couple of sisters?_


End file.
